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Posts published by Maria Newman

While much of the focus of the protests in Wisconsin and other states that are trying to outlaw collective bargaining has focused on how it will affect public schools, the online publication Inside Higher Ed is reporting that college faculty members are also at risk of losing their bargaining rights.

Faculty members have been among the ranks of protesters in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois not just in solidarity with other public employees, but also in an effort to protect their own rights, Scott Jaschik reported for Inside Higher Ed.

Mr. Jaschik points out that most college faculty members nationally are not unionized. “A Supreme Court ruling has largely blocked faculty union organizing at private colleges, while state governments regulate collective bargaining in the public sector,” he writes.

Unions are more prevalent in colleges and universities in the Northeast, Midwest and West, he said.

Inside Higher Ed interviewed several faculty members about what collective bargaining has meant to them.

Stephen H. Aby, an education and sociology librarian at the University of Akron, said that the faculty union there recently won domestic partnership benefits. He said that Akron was “well behind the country” on that issue, but that the measure was “huge in terms of the message it sends” about the university being inclusive.

More than 853,000 public high school seniors in last May’s graduating class, or 28 percent of the class, took at least one A.P. exam. Some 59 percent of those who took the tests earned a grade of 3, 4 or 5, which are required for college credit.

Trevor Packer, vice president of the Advanced Placement program, said that while the report shows that more students across the country enroll each year in classes to prepare them for the exams, there are some signs that improvement is not consistent among some groups and in some subject areas.

Over the past decade, the number of minority students graduating with a successful A.P. experience has more than doubled, according to the report.

“A focus on access and equity is resulting in greater percentages of students going into college with A.P. scores that qualify and result in higher college performance,’’ he said.

But the gap between how those students performed, compared to nonminority students, is still great in most states in the country.

African-Americans, for example, represented just over 14.6 percent of the total high school graduating class last year, but made up less than 4 percent of the A.P. student population who earned a score of 3 or better on at least one exam.